Jargon Watch: Solastalgia
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA 
on 01. 3.08
Solastalgia -- "a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home," according to Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht; in essence, it's pining for a lost environment. It's the mashup of the roots solacium (comfort) and algia (pain), which, when combined, forms a term (and an idea) reminiscent of nostalgia.
Coined from responses from interviews Albrecht conducted over the past few years, the word describes Australians' deep (and growing) sense of loss as they watch the landscape around them change. "They no longer feel like they know the place they've lived for decades," he says.
The theory is also a very interesting approach to thinking about climate change; it brings local context to a global problem that, to this point, has been very difficult to contextualize on an individual level. In addition to the predicted rising sea levels (that's San Francisco, above) and other additional consequences like habitat loss, ecosystem destruction and species' extinction, Clive Thompson argues in Wired, "we should also be concerned about the huge toll climate change will inflict on our mental health. In the modern, industrialized West, many of us have forgotten how deeply we rely on the stability of nature for our psychic well-being."
"This is a neat mythos, but in truth it's a pretty natural human urge to identify with a place and build one's sense of self around its comforts and permanence. I live in Manhattan, where the globe-hopping denizens tend to go berserk if their favorite coffee shop closes down. How will they react in 20 or 30 years if the native trees can't handle the 5-degree spike in average temperature? Or if weird new bugs infest the city in summer, fall shrinks to a single month, and snow becomes a distant memory? 'We like to think that we're cool, 21st-century people, but the basic sense of a connection to the land is still big,' Albrecht says. 'We haven't evolved that much.'"
Interesting stuff; this may be the first time we hear "solastalgia," but, until climate change is reigned in, it won't be the last. ::Wired
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As an Aussie, I can certainly identify with this. It goes beyond nostalgia to a very real grief. Where is Australia? It's pretty much gone in the southern states... and it hurts.
I think the clincher for me was Google Earth - being able to see what's happened in our state in just a couple of hundred years. The damage, the encroachment goes beyond what words can describe.
I'm an Aussie too,
It's funny. We live on one of the most delicate continents on earth and have treated it with the most disdain in some regards.
I dare you to find a lake or a river that doesn't look like a hovel in the southern states. Would never swim anywhere these days.
Global warming is nothing compared to environmental destruction and toxins.
I wonder if most Aussies give a crap.
Well congratulations on your new P.M. just having signed the kyoto treaty then. That is a step in the right direction.
Hey, Germans feel solastalgia, too: My Dad has been puzzled and unhappy about the disappearance of chanterelles in the forest near my parents' house.
Thanks for helping me find a word for it, Collin.
That's an eerie illustration, but as one local to the area, I can't help but notice that it represents a sea change that would take a LOT of melting ice to produce, far more than is forecast for the next century or two:
This map represents fourteen meters of sea level rise:
http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=37.7772,-122.4371&z=5&m=14
That image shows much deeper water.
It's distracting enough that I find myself assuming the rest of the story will be as hyperbolic.
In Finland, it's supposed to be winter. 16th of January and when I look out of the window, i see green grass. No snow.
Solastalgia seems common around here. Talking with friends about how it used to be. Wondering how my son (now 6yrs.) will remember winters when he's adult. Most probably he wont have the memories of skiing, playing in the snow, building snow castles and having snow fights.
I remember those things well and it feels like something is badly out of the place. Just can't put my finger on it. Why I feel like this. Just wonder how all the animals that used to hibernate in little caves under snow will manage. And plants that need the snow cover to survive the sub zero temperatures.
I'm not feeling down in the "traditional" way. This sadness is not about me. For that reason, it is very hard to deal with it. What would a shrink have to say to make me feel better?
Ex-pats like me regularly feel homesickness even after a few decades of living "away". When people who relocate to another place within their own country return to the place they left and find it damaged or no longer there at all, they also feel homesickness and a deep sense of loss because they can never go home again. When climate change or overexploitation renders a landscape unrecognizeable and all the sights, sounds, smells and other experiences that registered their presence forever in your mind and heart have gone, what else can one do but grieve not only for the personal loss but for the loss to the Earth and the species of plants and animals that lived in the once-upon-a-time habitat. We are not just losing our immediate environs; we are losing the Earth to greed, stupidity, ignorance and carelessness. It is sad indeed that we choose to waste so much time and money chasing the dream of finding water or other signs of life on a chunk of rock like Mars or some other planet's moon, but do not have the intelligence to protect species and vital ecological functions on the only planet in our solar system that is capable of supporting an abundance of life forms.
What do we say to our children? Much as I would like to be a grandmother, I advise my children (both of child-bearing age) not to have any. If I had known then what I know now I wouldn't not have had children myself. When I see babies, children and youth I feel sorry for them and fear for their future as they are in a world where political and corporate agendas do not consider the consequences of their decisions on the next generation. Neither our children nor environmental health matter when making lots of money is at the primary objective.
Whatever happened to common decency, respect for all life forms, understanding of the life that supports our own lives, and responsibility for our children and other species? We have been deliberately dumbed down and everything has been disconnected and commodified for a quick sale and big returns for the few. This, too, is part and parcel of the sense of loss.
This Earth used to be very beautiful and clean. Parts of it are still beautiful, but none of it is in pristine condition any more.
As Mark Twain said, "Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to". Every one of us should feel a profound sense of shame for what we have done to life on this planet.